Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History)

by Dennis Showalter

  Russian premobilization measures were reported to Berlin almost as soon as they began. German intelligence officers sought the whereabouts of any Russian units observed away from their normal stations. They increased the number of “tension travellers,” civilians and reserve officers legally dispatched across the border under various pretenses to observe possible war preparations. Königsberg described empty freight trains being transferred to the interior out of harm’s way, and troops moving by rail in the direction of a major junction. Other Russian units were leaving their maneuver grounds with unusual haste. Franco-Russian radio traffic, all in code, remained heavy. By the afternoon of the 27th, intelligence officers in Berlin were convinced that Russia had implemented, not merely announced, her premobilization program.

  Through the next day reports of troop movements, of concentrations of rolling stock, of security guards posted on railway lines, bridges, and water towers, continued to pour in. The paramilitary frontier guard was in some areas being reinforced by army troops. Agents in place were reporting the calling up of reservists and the purchasing of horses. Radio traffic between Paris and Bobriusk was increasing. Everything known to date fit German information and German assumptions about Russia’s war plans.80

  The relatively weak forces allotted to Germany’s eastern theater could not have been far from Moltke’s thoughts when he compiled his “Evaluation of the Political Situation” on July 28. The memorandum is dominated by fear of a Russia the chief of staff saw as pursuing the politics of brinkmanship. She was advancing her own preparations to the point where her armies could cross the frontier within a few days of mobilization, but stopping short of issuing the final orders in an effort to force her enemies, Germany and Austria, into mobilizing first. This in turn would act as a casus foederis for France, perhaps for England as well.81

  Intelligence reports, submitted through July 29 and summarized at 4:00 p.m., described the Russian preparations to date as “passive.” The deployment of troops on the frontier and along the railways had been followed neither by a general call-up of reservists, even in the border districts, nor by mobilization orders. At 5:25 p.m., however, a telegram from the German consul in Moscow quoted “a very good source” that Russian mobilization was set for the next day.82 From a military perspective Germany seemed to face a choice between abandoning the Schlieffen Plan with its western focus and exposing Germany’s eastern provinces fully to the Russian steamroller. Even the most pessimistic general staff calculations of the prospects for a successful delaying action in the east had not been based on the kinds of hammer blows the Russians could throw if allowed to mobilize and concentrate undisturbed.

  Yet neither Moltke’s alarm nor the demands of Prussian war minister Erich von Falkenhayn for preliminary mobilization were enough to move Bethmann. The chancellor’s reluctance reflected mixed motives—hope that at the eleventh hour a miracle might happen; desire to bring the Social Democrats into line behind a war waged against tsarist autocracy; and determination to make Russia cut her own diplomatic throat. As early as July 26, Bethmann had reacted to a demonstration before the Russian embassy by insisting that such behavior merely gave Russia an excuse to claim that Germany wanted war. This would be premature as long as Russia had made no aggressive moves. Whatever happened, Bethmann insisted, Russia must be put in the wrong before Germany and the world.83 When he met with Moltke, Falkenhayn, and Jagow on the evening of July 29, he responded to the generals’ urging by stressing the risks of sacrificing public opinion at home and in Great Britain. England, Bethmann argued, would not stand by her ally should Russia unleash a general war by attacking Austria.

  Bethmann’s position was reflected in the conference between Sazonov and the German ambassador, held sometime between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. the same day. Pourtalès insisted that if Russia continued her mobilization measures, Germany would be forced in her turn to mobilize and a European war would be almost impossible to stop. Sazonov regarded the communication as a virtual ultimatum in the worst traditions of 1909. As soon as Pourtalès left, Sazonov contacted the war minister and the chief of staff. Like their German counterparts, they insisted on immediate general mobilization. Unlike Bethmann, Sazonov agreed.

  The foreign minister was not well equipped to respond to the kind of if/then situation apparently presented by Pourtalès. In common with civilian heads of state everywhere in Europe, he was essentially ignorant of military matters. The days of the soldier-kings, even relatively pedestrian ones like Napoleon III or William I, were long past. The evolution of professionalism in the nineteenth century had generated a corresponding climate of specialization—particularly in Russia, whose administrative ethos was anything but friendly to the military virtues. Wearing a beme-dalled uniform on state occasions hardly conferred expertise. Nor did a major crisis provide a favorable environment for challenging the men who claimed to know what they were doing, even if they were part of the system that had most recently produced Tsushima and Mukden. Since the question had first been raised, Russia’s generals had insisted that a partial mobilization would significantly interfere with a general mobilization. And Germany’s attitude in the context of Austria’s attack on Serbia seemed to render general mobilization inevitable.

  The orders were on the point of being dispatched when Nicholas suspended them. A conciliatory telegram from William had led the tsar to hope Germany might yet back down. Sazonov was not directly informed of the imperial decision, but the war minister lost no time in letting him know the new turn of events. By that time it was close to midnight and Sazonov, understandably exhausted, went to bed. At 1:00 a.m. on July 30, Pourtalès asked to see him once more. The dishevelled foreign minister heard Bethmann’s latest proposal: Germany would do its best to get Austria to renounce territorial claims against Serbia. Sazonov replied that this was no longer enough. Under pressure he finally agreed that if Austria would remove from her ultimatum the clauses attacking Serbian sovereignty, Russia would halt her own military preparations.84

  In making this offer Sazonov may have wished for no more than a chance to go back to bed. In any case his mind had changed when he met with the French and British ambassadors during the morning of July 30. Germany’s latest proposal, Sazonov declared, was unsatisfactory. Under its terms, even if Serbia’s territorial integrity were respected, she would eventually become a vassal of Austria, “just as Bokhara . . . was a vassal of Russia.”85

  Sazonov’s conclusion that Russia would face internal revolution by accepting this possibility is less significant than his choice of comparisons. Insisting on an essential identity in terms of foreign policy between central Asia and southeastern Europe was a major contribution to the outbreak of world war and the end of the Russian Empire. It was also a significant vindication of Holstein’s position on Russia’s ultimate intentions in the Balkans.

  At 11:00 a.m. Sazonov had another meeting, this one with the war minister and the chief of staff. Both once again urged immediate general mobilization, arguing that war was inevitable and German mobilization was much further advanced than anyone supposed. This convinced Sazonov once more—if further convincing was, in fact, needed. Unable to persuade the tsar by telephone to take this step, Sazonov made a personal appointment for 3:00 p.m. For almost an hour he used his considerable eloquence to persuade a still-wavering Nicholas to order general mobilization, “as it was clear to everybody that Germany had decided to bring about a collision.” When the tsar finally agreed Sazonov telephoned the chief of staff, transmitted the authorization, and told the officer that the decision was final. He could smash his telephone.86

  Once again, Sazonov chose an illustration that was a metaphor. The telephone and the telegraph had done much to shape events in the past month, both by overwhelming statesmen with more material than they could process and by accelerating the pace of events. Modern communications technology was a double-edged sword. It enabled a much finer tuning of crisis management than had been possible in earlier generations. Sir Charles Napier’
s conquest of Sind, Marchand’s and Kitchener’s clash at Fashoda, were anachronisms by 1914. No longer could general wars begin inadvertently on Europe’s peripheries. But once a crisis began frightening the participants, the ready availability of information tended to destabilize the situation even further.87

  The impact of broken sleep, interrupted meals, and ruined digestions has seldom been considered in evaluating the outcome of the July Crisis. Such factors were not likely to be stressed in the memoirs of men raised in atmospheres of Victorian reticence. Who would dare suggest he had contributed to starting a war that slaughtered millions of men because bowel disturbances affected his judgment? Yet most of the key decisions in every European capital were being made by men in their fifties and sixties, accustomed to eating and drinking well in an era when geriatric medicine was based principally on admonitions to lead a regular life with limited stress.

  Anything less like the situation in Berlin can scarcely be imagined. Fritz Fischer, Immanuel Geiss, and their imitators present a picture of Germany’s decision makers insouciantly playing Russia as a matador plays the bull, waiting patiently for the final decision that would make her the villain of the drama at home and abroad. As late as July 25, senior officials of the foreign office reassured Berliner Tageblatt editor Theodor Wolff that “neither Russia, nor France, nor England” wanted war. Russia in particular would find “everything stolen . . . and no ammunition.” But Wolff remarked on Jagow’s shuffling gait and stopped posture. Kurt Riezler noted that after the news of Russia’s partial mobilization the work “day” began extending to 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.88 Moltke continued to warn of the risks Germany was running by not ordering her own general mobilization—particularly in view of Britain’s repeated statements that she would not remain neutral in a Russo-German conflict. And as Bethmann faced the collapse of his strategy, his aplomb collapsed along with it.

  Like every other politician in Europe Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg had spent his career talking of war, considering it, evaluating its prospects. Morocco, Durazzo, or Armenia—the obscure places of the globe had repeatedly inspired speculations of Armageddon. But at the eleventh hour, with reality on his doorstep, Bethmann sought to withdraw from the brink. He turned eastward, not to St. Petersburg, but to Vienna, encouraging Austria at least to consider the prospects of mediation. Germany, he declared, refused “to be drawn lightly into a world conflagration by Vienna.” A second dispatch, reflecting Pourtalès’ conversations with Sazonov, suggested that if Austria now declined to bend it would scarcely be possible to blame Russia for the outbreak of a war.89

  Metaphorically at least, Bethmann was speaking into a wire deader than Yanushkevich’s demolished telephone. Berchtold did agree to discuss views with St. Petersburg, but remained adamant in his insistence that this time the great powers would have to accept Serbia’s reduction to vassalage. Apart from Austria’s particular circumstances, the risks to Europe as a whole of allowing this petty state a continued free hand were entirely too high.90

  In this context, the final agreement between Bethmann and Moltke to proclaim Germany’s State of Imminent War (drohende Kriegsgefahrzu-stand) no later than the morning of July 31 reflected more desperation than affirmation. The initial decision was taken around 9:00 p.m. on July 30 at the end of another long, exhausting day of waiting for words from Vienna or St. Petersburg that never came. Unlike the Russian, the German system had no built-in grace periods. Implementing the drohende Kriegs-gefahrzustand meant automatic mobilization and war. The first rumors of a Russian general mobilization reached Berlin around 11:00 p.m. This was probably enough for Bethmann. His long-term forebodings about Russia’s aims and intentions could scarcely have led him to put much faith in any last-minute changes in St. Petersburg’s course. There was still time—twelve or fifteen hours—for something to happen, even if no one quite knew what. But one final corroboration, one final scrap of paper, remained important.91

  The stream of reports to Berlin that Russia had ordered general mobilization steadily increased. At 8:00 a.m. on the 31st the intelligence officer of XX Corps at Allenstein sent a coded message. His agents had seen at several points along the Russian frontier red posters proclaiming general mobilization. Moltke was initially skeptical. Perhaps the poster announced no more than a practice mobilization, or a recall of reservists. When confronted with corroborating accounts from XVII Corps at Danzig and VI Corps at Breslau, Moltke breathed deeply and said that Germany now had no choice but to mobilize. His next step was to telephone XX Corps headquarters, insist he needed solid proof of Russia’s mobilization, and instruct that an actual notice be obtained by any means necessary.

  Perhaps the chief of staff wanted physical evidence in case Bethmann changed his mind. Perhaps after a month of ephemera, of telegrams and conversations and phone messages, he just wanted to have something tangible in his possession. But any lingering thoughts that the red posters were phantoms of overheated imaginations, that this crisis would fade away as had so many others, vanished when the intelligence officer of XX Corps took the risk of telephoning over an open line to report that a copy of the Russian announcement was in German hands.92

  German intelligence in the east depended heavily for low-level information on Polish and Lithuanian Jews. Cattle dealers and small-scale merchants, occasionally smugglers, they were constantly moving back and forth across the border. Few of them had any cause to feel loyalty towards a tsarist government that had systematically and brutally persecuted Jews for generations. Fewer still cared much about the high politics of the goyim except as it influenced their lives, threatening their sons with conscription or offering the chance to turn a profit. Selling grain to a commissary, horses to a remount officer, or information to an intelligence bureau—all were part of the same process of making a living on the margins of societies whose official representatives despised and distrusted them.93

  Pincus Urwicz was a merchant in the Russian town of Kolno—a high-flown designation for a horse-and-cart trader in general merchandise who had a small sideline in military information. To date he had hardly been a Scarlet Pimpernel. The bits and pieces of news he delivered to Allenstein were so unimportant, the documents he obtained so routine, that he had never felt constrained to take security precautions more profound than carrying the material out of plain sight. Though German records are silent on this point, it is probable that Urwicz was a low-grade double agent, providing similar information to the Russians on his return trips. But on July 30 he noticed something unusual. Large placards in the Russian language were being posted all over Kolno. Like many of his coreligionists, Urwicz read no Russian. But talk of mobilization and war was as common in the marketplaces and synagogues along the border as it was in barracks or offices. Urwicz waited until dark, slipped out of his house, made his way to the city hall, and removed one of the posters. Then, with a coolness surprising under the circumstances, he returned home and went to sleep. After a few hours he harnessed his horse and started for the border, the poster carefully sewn into his coat.

  Urwicz was both a familiar figure and a potential firsthand source of information on what the Germans might be doing. The Russian guards passed him through without question, and he promptly reported to the German customs office. When his contact officer, Captain von Röder, received a telephone call that a Jew with a Russian mobilization poster was on the German side of the frontier, he had no trouble securing a car to take him at the breakneck speed of thirty-five miles an hour to a rendezvous with Urwicz.94

  The ironic implications of a Prussian aristocrat dashing off to meet a despised Ostjude are exceeded by the greater irony that made the whole event a footnote. At 11:45 a.m., only a few minutes after Röder confirmed to Berlin the fact of Russian mobilization, official notification arrived from St. Petersburg. At 1:00 p.m. Germany declared its own drohende Kriegs-gefahrzustand. At 3:30 p.m., Bethmann telegraphed Pourtalès to inform Sazonov that mobilization must follow unless Russia stood down her military preparations and clearly not
ified Germany of that fact within twelve hours.95 Pincus Urwicz slipped out of history’s pages. How might postwar anti-Semites have coped with the story had Urwicz crossed the border a few hours earlier, or had the Russians announced their intentions a few hours later? It would have been a challenge to deny the deed of a little man who, whatever his motives, risked his life to bring Germany its first proof that, at last, the Cossacks were coming.

  PART II

  NOW THRIVE THE ARMOURERS

  4

  The Virgin Soldiers

  I

  In the German army, high summer was a pause for breath. Officers contemplated long leaves and cures. Time-expiring NCOs thought of pensions and prospective civil-service posts. Privates in their last weeks of active duty invested in beer mugs, pipes, and photos commemorating their service. Regimental and brigade exercises were over. Next on the training schedule would be the autumn maneuvers, which, rumor had it, were this year expected to be more realistic than ever. In the garrison towns of East Prussia, parade grounds and barracks stood temporarily empty as the regiments turned to help bring in a bumper crop, one of the best in years.

  Farmers, chronically short of help, disliking and distrusting the gangs of Polish and Russian seasonal workers that crossed the border at harvest time, welcomed the soldiers. Not only were they honest Germans; they cost nothing but bread and cheese, a little sausage, and plenty of beer. For the officers, harvest duty was reciprocity for an autumn’s hunting and a winter’s dancing, an insurance policy against the next year’s round of rural social activities. For countrymen among the rank and file, harvesting could be a pleasant reminder of their own home villages, particularly if the women were friendly. City boys from Hamburg or Dortmund, marked as aliens by their accents, sweating over unfamiliar implements and unfamiliar tasks, might at least rejoice in a change from the endless routines of drill and spit-and-polish.